Inanimate Pronoun Confusion (Or, Why I Thought Jesus Was A Girl)

Joy to the world, the lord has come!

Let Earth receive her king!

That line from Joy To The World caused me so much confusion when I was younger. See, I thought about words in an odd way. When I heard this line, I didn't understand the concept that you could use gendered pronouns to refer to inanimate or genderless objects like the Earth. When I heard "Let Earth receive her king", I didn't know that the "her" was referring to Earth being the one possessing the king, who was the Lord previously referred to. So, I looked at the sentence before it. I concluded that, since the only other major noun in the sentence was "lord", then the "her" must somehow be connected to the "lord". Okay, so, I thought Jesus was female then. (I should mention I didn't grow up in a Christian, Jewish, or Muslim household.)

But what about "king"? Well, then I concluded that "king" must also have another meaning I didn't know about, equivalent to "the essence of kingliness". So, I thought the line was "Let the Earth receive the kingliness of the lord (who was female)".

Yeah.

Later I understood the whole Earth = She thing. I actually think it's interesting to look at how gendered pronouns are applied to genderless or inanimate things. My grades 6-8 Language Arts teacher once had a discussion which I thought was pretty accurate: In general, objects are female, especially when they're being used for some purpose (a boat, a gun, a car, etc.) And in general, animals are male, unless they're specifically shown as having something to do with birth or children. (I must admit that I fall into the trap of calling female dogs "boy", though that might just be because I grew up with all male dogs.)

That certainly tells you a bit about how we think of things - objects, which we tend to refer to as female, can't talk back. They do whatever we make them do. Animals, on the other hand, have a will of their own.

I'd like to think I assign my dear objects gender randomly. My piano, Astarte, and my keyboard, Claire, I've given female names. My recorder, Lare, is genderqueer. And my favorite notebook has a male name, Alfred.

Game Time Wednesday: KPT Changes In Finnish

Oh, blog. How I've ignored you lately. I'm sorry, but life has once again gotten in the way of the internet. I have one little post planned for a holiday special, but other than that, you probably won't see me much until the new year.

But in the meantime, have a nice game of consonant gradation in Finnish. Match the strong infinitive form of the verb to its weak first-person conjugation!

Game Time Wednesday: French To Slovak Colors

I must admit that it stroked the ego a little bit when you can translate from one non-native language to another. Even if it's just simple vocabulary words. Here's 16 flashcards of colors in both French and Slovak - study them, then click on the multiple game forms at the bottom to practice them! I'm partial to the matching one, myself.

What struck me, looking at the Slovak colors, is how similar they are to Czech. I knew the two languages were close, but these are really close. /oh look who fails at being articulate. I plan to look more into Slavic languages in the future - the relationships they have seem very similar to the Romance family.

Word Dynamo at dictionary.com

It should be no secret by now that I love language games, especially when it comes to vocabulary. So, recently I decided to check out dictionary.com's new(ish) addition, Word Dynamo.

How to describe it? The best way would be for you to go and see it for yourself, but basically, it's a catalogue of games for learning English vocabulary. What makes it different from, for example, the Language section at Quia is that once you sign up, you have a "word score" - a tracker of different words you've learned.

It's not completely accurate. I know I know way more words than what my current word score is, having only joined yesterday. But it gives you a real sense of accomplishment to see the "150 words added to your word score!" button.

There are different formats for the games you can choose from. I'm partial to the crosswords, myself. You can change and experiment with those to see which is best for you.

Also, it's not just for fun. If you need to study for school or work, you can create your own word lists and input them into the games so you can study with more than just flashcards.

So yes, I would definitely recommend this site for anyone who likes words.

(Also, I hope this makes up for missing Wednesday? *Puppy eyes*)

Game Time Wednesday: Basic Hungarian

Today, I'll actually be recommending two games, because of how similar and easy they are. Two "basic Hungarian vocabulary and survival phrases" games that can be played a variety of ways.

Game 1

Game 2

The beauty of these games is that they can be played in multiple styles - personally, I like the Matching cards the best. If you're new to Hungarian, click the "list of terms" button (or just play the flashcards first). Also, the words/phrases change each time you play, so there's no reason to play only once!

Changing How We Frame Grammar

Take a look at any prescriptivist piece about grammar. Go on, try it. I'll wait.

What I want to ask is: Is it positive? Do people talk about how much of a miracle it is that the human mind can separate all these individual words into their own categories and ascribe meanings to their combinations, with barely any effort at all? I'll wager it's a no - instead, it's probably talking about the "ruin of the English language", moaning about how today's generation is "borderline illiterate", raging against text lingo, all the stuff we've heard a thousand times before.

Here's the thing that frustrates me: This is how most American schools teach grammar, too.

I'm not saying 1st grade teachers take class time to rant about society "lax attitude toward syntax" (oh lookie, I made an unintentionally terrible rhyme). But throughout school - whether it's elementary, high school, or college - teachers are constantly putting grammar and English in general in a negative light.

Parts of speech, literary devices, and spelling are taught as rigid rules to be obeyed. Through countless exercises of "correcting improper usage", students come to see grammar and spelling as iron rules that will get points taken off their essays.

I've gone to several schools and had many different English teachers. I can't recall a single one of them framing grammar/spelling as anything except "follow these iron rules or you will fail". (Even my favorite teacher, unfortunately, did this quite a bit.)

We need to let students see language for the wonder that it is. I understand that it's hard for a lot of people to be passionate about learning, but think. Maybe take a minute out of your gerund vs. participle drills to talk about how cool it is that verbs can be used this way. In a more advanced class, maybe mention some interesting similar constructions that other languages have. Instead of ruthlessly correcting your students' pronunciation, have a lesson about regional dialects.

(Brief digression: I plan to write more about the place of dialects and education, especially AAVE.)

Instead of spelling test #503, have a lesson about how English spellings have changed over time.

Language is a vast, fluid, and fascinating thing. Don't teach children that's it's a narrow, restrictive clamp on their speech and writing.

Game Time Wednesday: Greek or Latin?

It should come as no surprise that I love Latin roots, though I've grown just a little tired of teachers constantly trying to explain them to the class as though we didn't learn where lots of our words come from already.

I must admit, though, sometimes I tend to blur my Greek and Latin. Sure, sometimes they're rather obvious - I'm never going to confuse mono- and un-. But I can often forget which one a root belongs to, and along comes this game to help remind you (and me) of some!

Game Time Wednesday: IPA code!

I've become increasingly interested in IPA ever since I first peeked into the world of phonetics. It fascinates me at the same time it frustrates me. But I was incredibly excited to find this little gem of a game: Can you name the word given their IPA pronunciation?

It's pretty simple: 26 English words in IPA are written in one box, and you type in the Latin alphabet equivalent for it. You don't have to go in order.

I did manage to get them all on the first try, but just barely - haɪt stumped me until the last minute. (I kept thinking it was "hide".)

A really fun way to practice your IPA knowledge!

Game: Finnish Numbers

Let's start off with something simple for the first Game Time Wednesday. A basic Finnish vocabulary game from quia.com, test how well you know some Finnish numbers! You can choose multiple modes to play in.

Forgive Me - And What's New On Wednesdays

I really am sorry I've let the blog gather dust for so long. Life's been incredibly hectic lately, with school, choir, acting, and everything else just crashing back at once. Stress has been limiting my ability to think about language.

And, as you've probably noticed, I haven't been doing Songs In Languages I Don't Speak. That's because of business, but also because I'm a little tired of looking for great songs in new languages. I do still listen to music that's 90% in non-English languages, but the problem is that they tend to be the same language. A lot of German, a lot of French, a lot of Finnish and Hungarian. And I don't want to just search "*X language* folk music" at the last minute because I haven't prepared.

So, until further notice, Songs In Languages I Don't Speak is going on hold for a while.

However, that doesn't mean that there will be nothing on Wednesdays. I've been looking at create language games on websites like Quia and Sporcle, and since I know games are a fun way to either practice the language you're learning or take a glance at a new language, I've decided to link some of my favorite language games on Wednesdays.

Again, I'll try to be as diverse as possible, but I want to work with what's on the websites.

So thank you for being patient about my absence, and looks forward to Wednesday Game Time!

Quick News: Sámi At Omniglot

I was excited to see that Omniglot now finally has a lot more detail on the many types of Sámi languages. Check out the pages for Kildin, Inari, Skolt, Lule, North, South, Ter, and Ume Sámi.

Controlling Language

I've been thinking a lot about prescriptivism and descriptivism lately. You should probably be able to tell it based on the rest of this blog, but I'm firmly descriptivist. And one of the subjects this led me thinking to was how futile the efforts of prescriptivists are. After all, I thought, you can't control a whole language!

But then I remembered: Isn't the whole point of descriptivist philosophy that a language comes from the people who speak it? Isn't that a form of control?

So, you wind up with two statements here that you need to balance:

1.People who speak a language make the rules for it by how they speak it.
2.It is impossible for people to control how other people speak a language.

There may be base "rules" in languages, but they change over time through language evolution. And language doesn't magically change on its own - people have to start speaking it differently. But is that really a form of "control"?

I say it is. When we're deciding whether language is this distant amorphous deity which we have no power over or something that we control completely and utterly, there really is only one thing that needs to be taken into account: Whose speaking are you trying to control?

When you control how you yourself speak - when you actively make the effort to say "is not" or "are not" instead of "ain't" - that is away of controlling language. That is natural, you have the power and right to do that, and it contributes to language evolution either way.

But, when you try to control how someone else speaks - when you yell at them for saying "ain't" instead of "are not" - then you should feel how completely out of control you are. Because one person does not control a language - evolution is made by every single speaker speaking the language their way.

So yes, language is in your control. YOUR control - not your English teacher's, not your parents'. Sorry prescriptivists, you simply can't win.

Linguistics Word Cloud

As promised, a general linguistics word cloud. In the shape of a duck because, well, DUCKS:

(Click for full size.)

Obviously, I had a lot to choose from. I just tried to get words from lots of linguistic areas. For the families, I was limited to only one word (no hyphens), which narrowed my choices a little, but I tried to go all over the globe.

Enjoy!

Pseudo-Amateur Linguist As A Word Cloud

Okay, so I might have had far too much fun discovering this little toy. I'm planning on making a general linguistics cloud soon, but I was curious what would happen when I put my blog through. Here's the result:

(Click for full size.)

Nice. My only question is....why the hell are "Facebook" and "Twitter" on there? I've never mentioned those...have I?

Passivity And The Framing Of Descriptions

Latin verbs tend to be pretty uninteresting. Complicated and frustrating, occasionally, but not all too interesting. However, when going through my textbook last year, there were a tiny handful of verbs that caught my attention. Not their conjugations, but their meanings - more specifically, how the textbook phrased their meanings.

Gaudēre - To be happy

Esurire - To be hungry

Timēre - To be afraid of

Now, the knee-jerk reaction of a modern English speaker would probably be "Why are those verbs? They should just be adjectives." Mine was. After all, what was the point of having specific verbs if they were just other ways of saying "I'm hungry" - Latin has plenty of adjectives used those exact ways.

However, then I looked at the specific words that fit this construction. I remembered that they all have alternate phrasings (in English) - that, in fact, were verbs. You rarely (if ever) hear or see these anymore, but recall:

To rejoice

To hunger

To fear

There we go, other ways of saying "I am ___" within the same language.

And those are what you would use if you were trying to literally translate a Latin sentence using gaudēre, esurire, or timēre. I'm not sure why these verb forms died in favor of their adjectives, but I know one thing: The meaning a verb form constructs and the meaning an adjective form constructs are different.

It's the difference between active and passing. With the verbs you are the one feeling the emotion. You're fearing the wolf, you're hungering, you're actively expressing happiness. By putting you in an active role - by framing emotions* as acts - the verb forms of these words indicate that you are seemingly in control of what your body experiences.

Whereas, in the adjective form, you're passive. Hunger is simply something happening to you - you're not doing anything. Happiness is in you, but you're not expressing or creating that happiness.

So, using an adjective as opposed to a verb is a way of linguistically taking the blame off the subject. You're not responsible for your fear if it just happened to....well, happen to you.

It's a minor thing, but an interesting one. Of course, this isn't even getting into the other methods of constructing what in English would be adjectives. One step at a time.

*Yes, I know that hunger isn't really an emotion. I have trouble phrasing things.

Sorry

For the lack of posting recently. I'm savoring my last few days before I am once again trapped within the confines of a school...

But, after thee first couple days of school, I'l probably start making normal posts again. I'm writing out a little review of the Finnish emersion camp I went to, and I have some topic ideas.

But for now, just hang back and check out this amazing new linguistics blog. A kickass aspiring linguist - what I aspire to be. (I'll probably never get there, but...)

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 19: В моей душе осадок зла

L.I.D.S.: Russian!

Here's a cute little tune from Russian rock band Воскресенье. Nothing too special, but a nice song. Admittedly Russian isn't my favorite Slavic language, but I don't actively dislike it.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 18: Mijn Leven Is Van Mij

L.I.D.S.: Dutch!

Okay, so this is another one where I'm "cheating" a little bit - This song was originally in German. In fact, it's from the same musical that provided S.I.L.I.D.S. Round 9. This is the Dutch version of the most famous song in the musical, Ich Gehör Nur Mir.

Interesting Articles, Round 2

This is another day when I'm too lazy to write up my own posts, and I found some nice articles to share. Aren't I just a wonderful student? As usual, some are new, some are old, all are fun to read.

(Also, I should mention that I was going to write a post about my experiences at a Finnish emersion camp. I found that I actually didn't have much to say on my own. But, if any of you are curious about it - maybe consider gooooing - I could give some information about it and a basic "review".)

Categorisation, Categories, and Prototypes - A piece about what we consider prototypes for categories, and the blurry boundary lines between categories.

List Of Unsolved Problems In Linguistics

Learning To Speak Czech - About some of the challenges that face Czech students, and perceptions of speakers of the language.

Initial Reactions To Czech (AKA, All I Can Say Without Doing Any Real Grammatical Research)

As a follow-up to my post on the Czech games, I'd like to post some short observations on the little Czech those games taught me.

*There are a lot more cognates than I thought there would be. Due to my socialization of language perception, I had always thought that Slavic languages in general, while in the Indo-European family and therefore bound to have some similarities to the Germanic/Romance section, would have pretty much unrecognizable vocabulary. I was amazed how many cognates I could recognize.

*I was right - Czech seems even more similar to Polish than I had guessed. In those little list of words, I recognized so many Polish cognates. One that really stood out to me was the phrase/word for "I don't understand" - "Nerozumím".

And now I can get off on a tangent about Polish grammar. In Czech, because "Ne" means "no", I can logically assume that "I understand" would be something along the lines of "rozumím". And the word for "I understand" in Polish? "Rozumiem".

I can also go one step further (now we're really getting into "Lorre, you should not be assuming this until you actually do some serious research" territory) and assume something about the first-person verb ending. In Polish, (one of the) present-tense first-person endings is an "m". "Rozumie" would be the stem of the word above. And take a look at the word for "I do not speak" - "Nemluvím". Removing the negative prefix, "I speak" would be "Mluvím". And for confirmation that this is an ending, I looked at the word for "you speak" - "Mluvíte". (Allow me to also point out the cognate in the "te" ending, identical in countless European languages, including one or two outside the Indo-European family.)

Anyway, my point is that "m" might be the first-person ending in both Polish and Czech.

*There also seem to be several grammatical similarities to Lithuanian. The one that made me go "Wow, holy crap!" (Honestly, I did think that. Yes, I do know I'm hopeless, thank you very much.) was that "ne": Lithuanian uses that negative prefix the same way Czech seems to. "I understand" = "Aš suprantu", while "I don't understand" = "Aš nesuprantu". Identical to the structure of "Nerozumím" or "Nemluvím".

*I already knew that Czech was gendered, but I wasn't sure how many it had. Slavic languages are pretty bad about gender - Polish has five genders that a word can be. I'm still not sure exactly how many Czech has, but  I now know it has at least three. You can deduce this if you look at the greetings for "Good morning", "good evening", and "good night". Each uses a different form of the adjective meaning "good":

"Dobré ráno"
"Dobrý večer"
"Dobrou noc"

*The number system seems as logical as they come. 11-19 all use their second number (i.e. "4" in 14) or modifications of it, plus the ending "-náct".

*Here's another one of those "I should probably research this" conjectures. There appears to be some sort of vowel gradation system used within the language. I take this from looking at the numbers.

"Five" = "Pět"
"Nine" = "Devět".

But, when the "náct" ending is added on, those "ě"s turn into "a"s.

"Fifteen" = "Patnáct"
"Nineteen" = "Devatenáct"

And that's all I have to say for now..although that was a lot of rambling. I will now proceed to do some actual studying on Czech, maybe see if I can confirm some of my theories. Actually, wait, I have one last observation:

*Czech seems like a very nice language. It may be conventionally "difficult", but then so are 99% of the languages I like. I have a strong feeling I'll be studying it for a while.

An Excellent Tool For Beginners Studying Czech

Lately, thanks largely to my growing obsession with the musical Drákula, I've become curious about the Czech language. Other than that one musical, I haven't looked into it much. However, I have studied bits of Polish, and listen to quite a bit of Russian, so I reckoned they couldn't be too far off, what with the closeness of Slavonic languages in general.

Thanks to the ever-amazing treasury of information that is Omniglot, I found a perfect new site for people who just want to learn some incredibly basic Czech: Games at Digital Dialects. It contains six games that teach you basic vocabulary - Numbers, survival greetings, colors, and the calendar.

The game goes a little differently depending on which one you're playing, but they follow a basic formula: You're shown a short list of vocabulary words that you'll use in the game, with their English equivalents. You can study them for as long as you want. If you're like me, you may want to write them down - both as a "cheat sheet" to use in emergencies, and to study later if you want to pursue the language. Then, the game starts.

I first played the numbers games (1-12, 13-20, and 10-100). This is probably the only time in history that I will say I actually enjoyed doing math. First, you do addition. You'll be given a problem like Čtrnáct + Tři, and a small list of possible answers (so it's multiple choice, in a way). You then choose the number that's the correct answer (in this case, 14 + 3 is 17, so the answer would be Sedmnáct). You're timed for each problem, with the time getting shorter as you progress.

After a while of addition problems, it switches to subtraction (don't worry, you never have to do multiplication or division!).

My personal favorite game was the colors. It gives you visual aids, which normally don't help me in learning, but worked here for association. This plays a little differently than the number games, so I would recommend you play it yourself to find out.

Now, I walked into this knowing not one word of Czech. And in the first half of the first game I played, I was failing pretty miserably - but by the end of that game I was doing much better. And I did excellently in the next game. By the third, I was kicking some vocabularies' asses. It was enjoyable, but most of all, really damn helpful. I can now recognize numbers up to 20, the basic color wheel, and basic greetings.

And, because I am a hopeless nerd, that gives me a sense of satisfaction beyond description.

So yes, I recommend these games for everyone who hasn't ever considered Czech as a language to learn. They're what language memory tools should be - easy, helpful, and fun.

Next I'll write up some of my initial observations, conjectures, and opinions about Czech. Remember, I love to run my mouth about things I know very little about.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 17: Pani Capuletti

L.I.D.S.: Polish!

Oh yeah, more musicals. As much as I'm normally neutral about Slavic languages - "Eh..they sound fine. Wouldn't wanna learn one." - Polish is one that I really do like. The way the words look and sound really appeals to me for a reason I can't quite put my finger on.

Anyway, this is a song from the Polish musical Romeo I Julia. You should probably be able to guess what it's an adaptation of.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 16: Sámi Soga Lávlla

L.I.D.S.: Northern Sámi!

It might seem odd, but there are a couple national anthems that I really adore. Romania, Finland, Israel, Russia, and this one right here are my favorites.

So yes, this is the national anthem of the Sámi. What first caught my attention was how calm and lovely it is - it doesn't sound much like an anthem, as my piano teacher put it when I played it to her. (Unfortunately this video only has the first verse - there was a longer one up, but now I can't find it.)

I am incredibly fascinated by all the Sámi languages. Sámigiella in particular, but all of them have this incredible, unique sound that is a marvel to listen to. And even more than the way the languages sound, I love the way they look - the letter combinations are fascinating, and the words are a sight to behold. (Try taking a look at the lyrics of the song in many of the languages.)

My Words Are Fine, Your Sentences Are Too Long!

The most interesting thing I like to see, in relation to language, is how people perceive certain aspects of language. Specifically, their perception of how those aspects indicate some sort of  "difficulty" in the language to them.

For example, one day I had a Finnish book with me just before I went to my comedy troupe's rehearsal. After a couple of people looked at the book and suggested it (everyone's very close-knit), I jokingly stood by the door and said "Thou shalt not pass until thou can read this word aloud to me!" The word I pointed to? Seitsemänsataayhdeksän. (I must give props to the couple people who actually tried. Most people just gaped open-mouthed at the word.) 

The primary reason people I asked gave for why the word seemed difficult to pronounce was that it was "so long".

But the word is actually very simple - it means seven hundred and nine. Look at the two:

Seitsemänsataayhdeksän = 22 letters.

Seven hundred and nine = 19 letters.

There are only three letters worth of difference between the two. So why should the first seem "long" if the second doesn't? It's because of the spaces, of course. There's barely a difference between the length of those two numbers when said out loud. Here's another one.

The Latin word advesperascere means, roughly, that 'it is growing dark'. It's used to indicate that evening is coming, night is falling. In my class, some of the chief complaints about Latin words was "they're so long!". This was one of those words that I've shown to people and gotten the "too long to pronounce" reaction. But let's take a look:

Advesperascere = 14 letters.

It is growing dark = 15 letters.

They're pretty much exactly the same length - in fact, the English way of saying it is slightly longer than the Latin. So when there's virtually no difference in how long it takes to say something, why is one thing considered "long" by some English speakers while the other isn't? It can't just be the spaces, can it?

But from everything I've observed, I think it can. English is a choppy language - what with our lack of verb endings and all. But we especially don't have that many compound words. In languages like Finnish, as one teacher said, you can simply "stick a bunch of words together into one and that word will mean the combination of all of them". But in English, we're so used to having our meanings separated out into their own little words, that when those spaces are removed, we see that as "long". Even when there's not really a difference in length at all.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 15: Pidä Kädestä

L.I.D.S.: Finnish!

Everyone loves to poke fun at the fact that pop music was what really kickstarted my curiosity about Finnish. But what better way was there? Songs like this one intrigued me - already lovely music was complimented by this completely foreign but even more lovely language, and I just kept thinking, "I need to know more about this."

Temporary Absence Alert

I'll be gone for the next two weeks at camp, so that means even less posting than I've been doing lately. Can't wait to get back!

Settling For Similarity

"I knew it. Giant bull heads weren't enough, now we have sea monsters attacking our boat-"

"Attacking our ship," said Julie.

That's an excerpt from the book "Voyage Of The Jaffa Wind", part of the children's series The Secrets Of Droon. (Which I happen to love.) There's a running gag in the book - the heroes are taking a journey in a sea vessel called the Jaffa Wind, but the group keeps arguing over whether it's a boat or a ship.

It seems like such an odd thing to disagree over, right? They basically mean the same thing, don't they?

But of course, they don't. No two words in a single language ever mean exactly the same thing. As I touched upon in my post on verbs a while ago, words that may evoke the same general action still put a different mental picture in the mind of the reader/listener. The words "run" and "dash" evoke subtly individual parts of the tableau that constructs the meaning behind the words.

In each of the dictionaries in my home, the only big difference in the entries for "boat" and "ship" are the sizes assigned to each vessel.  Sometimes "small" and "of a considerable size" is the only thing separating two similar nouns. But that is a difference, and it does matter when describing something. Writing "our large boat set sail..." will make your readers think something different than "our large ship set sail...", or even "our small ship set sail..."

And that's why "synonyms" never made sense to me in first grade, and still don't work now. I think a couple of times I actually raised my hand to say "But, 'yellow' and 'gold' are different..." when we would have those lessons. Of course, I understood what they wanted me to say, so I never did badly on an assignment about synonyms, but in the back of my mind I always kept thinking "This is WRONG. These words do not mean the same thing!"

If you regularly visit the website Freerice, like I do, then you've probably done their "English synonyms" category. And some of the so called "equivalents" in there really strike me - for example, one I saw today was "Boat means:" and the correct answer was "ship". Hmm.

So when dealing with synonyms, I really do not think teachers should be telling their students that the words "are the same", "are equal", or worst of all, "mean the same thing". Because no two English words are equal in meaning. Whether they're in different places along the verb continuum of strength, speed, or scope, or the continuum of size for nouns, no words are completely equal. 

There are words that are similar to each other. And that's how they should be approached and recognized - words that have similar general meanings, not the same meaning.

And to be honest, this attitude by a lot of writing teachers of "use the thesaurus to spice up your writing!" just leads to a lot of nonsensical word uses. Because if someone is throwing a football over their shoulder to someone far away, they are throwing it. They're not tossing it, because it would be incredibly awkward and wouldn't reach the person. They are not heaving it, because that evokes a comic image of someone straining and grunting to throw this light little object.

This misuse of similar-but-not-equal words is also the downfall of many a writer. I've seen even great authors make this mistake once or twice, but for genuinely not-at-all-talented writers, it's abused at least once a page. This is one of the many reasons people (including me) cite as to why we don't enjoy Stephenie Meyer's writing. In an incredibly epic blog, Twilight Snarker, the author actually has a count for how many times Meyer misuses a so-called synonym. They point out that the use of the word "saunter"in the preface completely ruins any drama Meyer was going for when she tried to evoke something like "slowly stalk".

So this is how I feel about synonyms. Writing and education would be much more realistic, practical, and better-sounding, if people just recognized that words are never equal, only vague similar.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 14: Niekur

Blogger is being a jerk. It won't let me select videos to upload here, so I'll just link for now.

L.I.D.S.: Lithuanian!


It should be no secret by now that I love Lithuanian, and this song is beautiful both for its language and it's piano.

More Scandinavian Language Humor

A joke about what language each Nordic country speaks (and Americans' occasionally idiocy about English). Go here for the explanation. (And click for original size.)

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 13: Kulla Kutse

L.I.D.S: Estonian!

It's pretty much a given that I like Estonian, given its tie to Finnish. And this song is just feel-good music at its most...good.

I'm Thinking...

Since I've lived with dogs my entire life (my family has never not had at least one, and we almost always have two), and walk them as a volunteer at my shelter, and I walk neighborhood dogs for a job, it's safe to say that I'm with dogs. A lot.

And when it comes to dog training, I see everyone always using English words as vocal commands. But it's been well established that dogs don't respond to words - they respond to the physical action associated with that particular sound. When we move a treat so far backwards that they have to sit, and say "sit" while doing that, and then later they will sit after being told "sit", they're not responding to the word's meaning itself. They've come to associate a physical action (sitting) with that syllable.

The reason behind using English words is not for the benefit of the dog, but for the human. A dog can be trained to sit after hearing the word "lala", but us humans can only respond to words that have, in our known language(s), the meaning of the physical action.

So I'm thinking - when, in the years to come, I have a dog of my own, I think I will try to train them using nonsense words. Because I don't think English needs to be used any more than necessary.

(Either that, or I'll use Latin. "Sede." "Descende!" "Veni!")

Scheduling Change

You've probably noticed that I've been pretty bad in keeping up the proper dates of Songs In Languages I Don't Speak. I just have a really hard time remembering "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to do something today", and then there's the actual picking of the song, and I end up off schedule. So, for now, Songs In Languages I Don't Speak will be posting only on Wednesdays. 

THIS IS ME BEING DISAGREEABLE

I love the blog The Linguistics Zone - there is a reason I link to it here. But I really have to disagree with this post, in which John repeats the commonly held sentiment that Romance Languages and languages with lots of vowels = musical, and that German and languages with lots of consonants = ugly/not musical.

I hear this from everyone I know. "French and Italian and Spanish are pretty! THEY HAVE VOWELS!" and "German is hideous! It's like, *spitting* 'ACH' all the time and there are no vowels!"

Some of you may know that I think German is incredibly gorgeous. And I absolutely cannot stand Italian and Spanish, two of, in my opinion, the ugliest languages on the planet. French is okay, but I don't agree with everyone who says that it's OMG BEAUTIFUL.

But that's a matter of personal opinion, obviously. And what I really want to talk about right now is the conception that more vowels and less consonants automatically makes a language more "musical".

First of all, remember that there are different types of music. And what sounds good with one type of music will not sound that way with another. For example, a large portion of my experience with German comes from musicals. And though there are, of course, ballads, songs on average tend to be faster than they would be in, say, classical music. And German works with that speed. Those consonant clusters and hard consonant sounds that in John's opinion make German "not really musical" sounds great when sung fast. Because the consonants create a bouncing effect - quickly transferring the singer from vowel to another in the quick rhythm. On the other hand, go and listen to a fast Italian pop song. Because of the lack of substantially hard consonants, all those "musical" vowels run together into one big messy phonetic soup.

Now, the same might not be true of German when it is sung more slowly. Because I've sung a lot of German opera, I do know that quite often the language sounds awkward for those long, held out, slow lines. Because then the consonants do sound like they're getting in the way as opposed to being helpful.

(That being said, I think Italian and Spanish in slow music still sound awful. Nothing will get me to like these languages.)

Also, what really bothers me about this method of measuring "musicality" is the assumption that consonants, especially hard ones and clusters, aren't beautiful. Or that vowels are automatically beautiful. For me, what makes a language beautiful/musical is not just having lots of vowels. For me, the musicality comes from the combinations of vowels and consonants, and how they work together. What drew me to Hungarian (which I rate as second-most musical language I've heard - give three guesses on the first) was how interesting the structure of the words were. Consonants that seemed like they should be clusters but somehow weren't combined with these cool-sounding new vowels! In fact, I liked the fact that there were almost never multiple vowels in a row.

And those guttural German clusters that everyone else seems to think are ugly? I love 'em! Sure, they're hard to say when you're just learning the language, but I still think they sound nice. Because they're paired with vowels in an interesting way. Languages like Italian and Spanish, and yes, French too, do not take advantage of the possibilities of phonetics at their disposal.

(All that being said, Dutch...doesn't use those guttural sounds too well. Sorry dude.)

Some Stuff Worth Reading

I'm feeling quite lazy this week, and I don't really want to write my own articles. But I am reading a lot of awesome languages books, which I plan to write about in the future - including a book by my favorite psycholinguistics writer Steven Pinker.

But again, I don't want to write my own stuff at this moment. So, I'm going to hand out a few suggestions for interesting articles I've found/read. Some of them are old, and some are recent, but I enjoy them all.

"Europanto" - An unintentional interlingua that's being slowly formed in Europe. Thanks to the always-awesome Sofi for showing me this!

Robbers Thwarted By Their Dialect - When you're trying to tell a clerk to "fill the bag", make sure it doesn't sound like "feel the bag".

What Defines A Language? - Thoughts on national and ethnic boundaries, and how they affect the language VS dialect debate.

Five Reasons To Learn A New Language - 'Nuff said.

German Under Attack By English? - I know this phenomenon is happening in so many languages, not just German, but I feel particularly said at the prospect that German might morph massively with English one day. I know I've said I don't mind language change - I don't. But when that change is "let's all make ourselves more like English"...

An Introductory Lesson In Volapük - This is one of those languages I know nothing about. Fun time!

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 12: Eijő

(I actually have a genuine reason for skipping Sunday. Blogger wasn't working on my computer, so I couldn't log in.)

L.I.D.S.: Livonian!

This is that Estonian band I mentioned earlier. I love everything about this song, not only the beautiful language. I know the title means "Lullaby", but beyond that I can't understand much. But of course, when has that ever deterred me?

Soft Letters And Drunk Germans

My mind has a tendency to wander, and lately it's been trotting all over languages closely related to each other. Specifically, I've been thinking about Estonian and Finnish and Dutch and German - and how those languages sound to me in relation to each other.

Frankly, I can't help but think of it two ways: Dutch sounds like a drunk German whose native language is English, and Estonian sounds like a Finn being really lazy.

It's because of the gradation of vowels that happens across those languages. It makes everything sound more "lax". And of course Dutch is one of English's closest relatives, so I view things on sort of a continuum:

Tot -(soften the t) - Dood -(alter the vowel) - Dead
Tanz -(soften the t and z) - Dans - (strengthen the s back to a [ts] sound) - Dance
Und -(since the end vowel can't be gradated further, remove it) - En (strengthen the vowel) - And (It's worth noting that where I live, quite a few people, myself included, will actually pronounce "and" as "en" quite often.)

So yes, to me Dutch sounds more "relaxed" than German, especially because it's so close to English. Also...to me it just sounds pretty garbled, even when it's being spoken with the clearest of diction, simply because of the guttural qualities of the language. This isn't to say I don't love how you sound, Dutch! It just means that I keep thinking "hangover imminent" whenever I hear you.

And Estonian...it doesn't do the same thing with the consonants, for the most part. But I do see it in the vowels.

I call vowels like ä "sharper" than vowels like a, because it's what it sounds like to me. So, from Finnish to Estonian, those vowels are "softened". You can see it in common words like pronouns:

Minä - Mina
Sinä - Sina

So, no theories or questions today. Just an observation about how I interpret phonologies of related languages.

If Languages Were People...

For a long time, lately, I've been toying with the idea of writing a series of short stories using personifications of languages as main characters. (Mostly focused on the Uralic and Indo-European families.) Along the lines of Scandinavia-And-The-World applied to language. There would be two things that the languages' personalities, and the events of the stories, would be based on:

1.Actual historical linguistic fact. How have speakers of one language treated another at some points in time? Where did a language come from? Etc, etc.

And more importantly:

2.Stereotypes of different languages. Americans love stereotyping other languages, and other countries do the same thing. French is the "language of love", German sounds "angry", etc.

Occasionally there will be a crossover with historical fact, because language is a part of history.

Some traits I know I'm definitely going to have:

Hungarian is the one member of the Uralic family that everyone else thinks is adopted. When he tries to prove his relationship through his cousins (who look nothing like him), Khanty and Mansi, no one is convinced.

German is volatile, with a nearly non-existant fuse to her hostility.

French is sex-obsessed.

English is a rather selfish brat who obsessively steals from all the other languages.

Latin is a zombie.

Livonian is very (VERY) old, and living in the Uralics' attic. Everyone except Estonian thinks that she's dead, and Estonian only remembers because her room is close to the attic and she can hear Livonian singing occasionally (This will be explained if you don't get the joke - like Scandinavia And The World, there will be a quick explanation following each story. In the case of this specific joke, look up Tuļļi Lum, an Estonian band whose singer is one of the only speakers of Livonian.)

Finnish hates Swedish with every fiber of his body, and will attempt to strangle him every time he tries to set foot in Finnish's house.

Latvian and Lithuanian are twins, and completely seclude themselves from the rest of their family. They live in the house of their dead mother, Proto-Indo-European, and everyone who's met them says they look exactly like the pictures they've seen of her.

Võro is Estonian's younger sister, who Estonian completely ignores. There's a parallel situation with Karelian, Finnish's lonely younger brother. They just want your attention, guys!

I'm debating whether conlangs should be robots (because of their "constructed life" status) or Frankenstein-style creations. For a while I actually toyed with the idea of conlangs like Esperanto and Interlingua being vampires, because of how they leeched off other languages for their own life.

This won't be written any time soon, but I'm definitely considering (and liking) the idea.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 11: Sanie Cu Zurgălăi

L.I.D.S.: Romanian!

First, I adore this song, and this singer is wonderful. She has a well-controlled operatic tone.

Second, it was said over at 37 Languages that "if you were to play any random Eastern European language and Italian at the same time then you'd have Romanian". From the multiple Romanian songs I've been listening to, and text I've been looking at, that seems pretty damn accurate. Specifically, throw any Balto-Slavic language and Italian into a blender, add a hint of Portuguese, and you've got Romanian.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 10: Lama Bada Yatathanna

(Damn, a day late again! I'm sorry - I plead being incredibly busy yesterday.)

L.I.D.S.: Arabic!

I apologize if I got the transliteration wrong. I'm goin' off YouTube, here.

This song is certainly pleasant, and Lena Chamamyan has a very nice voice. That being said, Arabic is definitely not high up on my list of favorite languages, if only because of its mass popularity (not in America, but you could probably guess that) and the fact that I'm really picky about scripts.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 9: Saigo No Dansu

L.I.D.S.: Japanese!

Is it cheating that I'm using the Japanese version of a song that's originally German? Yes. Do I care? No. The catchiness is just irresistible!

Side note about Japanese itself: To be honest again, I'm not a fan of Japanese. I'm all for languages with a lot of vowels (after all, Finnish fan), but when I hear Japanese being spoken, to me it always sounds a little...messy. Like everything is running together, almost sloppy. And of course, the script which has no phonological consistency is also a significant turnoff.

And I'm Like, "Get Over Yourselves Already"

I shouldn't have to tell you that there's a huge hatred by the majority of adults against the use of the word "like". My mother vigorously corrects me every single time I say it (EVEN IF I'm saying it in its "proper" context - "She danced like a ballerina"), and every teacher I know has gone on rants about how horrible it is, it's contributing to the (imaginary) "decline of proper English" among young people, how it's making the word "said" obsolete, etc. Dozens upon dozens of articles have been written on it, so I'm not even going to link to any specific one. Because I have the same response to all of them:

Get over it, people.


Introducing a familiar word into a new context in a language does not indicate a "decline" in that language. (I bet these people who are so vehemently opposed to this word would have been outraged back when "you" started to become singular...)

Moreover, here's a surprise: People use this word this way because it is useful. Everyone opposing the word points to the fact that you should say "said" instead - but "like" does far more than that.

"I was like, 'I would never do that.'"
"She was like, shocked."
"They were like," *shrug*
"I'm like, they wouldn't actually go that far..."

"Like" is used not just as a substitute for "said", or as a sentence "filler". It is used in most cases to indicate a general form of expression - emotion, action, words, appearance, and even thought. It is incredibly useful - many of the cases in which "like" is now used would be hard to word otherwise. And again, I keep coming back to this point - it is getting the same point across. In perhaps even a better way, you still understand what is being said.

So, I'm like, this word is good. Let's stick with it until something better begins to be accepted.

EDIT: Sofi makes an excellent point in the comments about how helpful the ambiguity of this word can be - when I say "She was like, 'woah'", I am not saying that those were her exact words. Instead, I'm giving a sense of her overall manner as it appeared to me.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 8: Jsi Můj Pan

L.I.D.S.: Czech!

I adore this musical, and everything about this song is beautiful. I love how Lucie's voice is unique - rough by many people's standards, but gorgeous. She seems to have her own technique, some way of singing that no one else knows. (Okay, done with the fangirling.)

My Favorite Language-Learning Website

A while ago, while looking for materials on learning Polish, I found the amazing website I Kinda Like Languages.  It's not a thorough course for any one language - instead, it's a ton of introductory courses for many different languages, each designed for the complete beginner. There are also some more thorough course for about three languages.

What I love most about these courses is that each one gives you a good idea of what the language is like. You can decide whether you would want to further learn this language after you finish the courses. Heck, this is how I fell in love with Lithuanian. And the best part? You can make your own courses! Simply register, there's a guide on how to format lessons (it's very simple), and you can help teach a language.

The site needs some more support - go give it!

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 7: Szállj Velem

L.I.D.S.: Hungarian!

Yes, I know I'm doing two pop songs in a row But I love this singer, and this song is MORE than catchy.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 6: Уште те има

(Sorry I'm a little off - better late than never!)

L.I.D.S.: Macedonian!

I have to admit, I'm not even a big fan of this song. But I know people who like it, and the pleasant-sounding language appeases it somewhat.

...And yes, I did copy and paste the Cyrillic. Remember what I said about my computer not having enough symbols?

Because This Much Stupidity Needs More Than One Tearing-Down

Oh, the idiocy of ignorant adults preaching about how the "illiterate" kids and texting are leading to a "collapse" of the English language.

BadLinguistics has already torn into Gerald Warner's idiotic, unfounded, and evidence-less arguments, but I think this needs another viewpoint - that of one of those "illiterate" children that is "attack[ing]" the English language.

Globalisation has meant that the predominance of English in computerised societies is making it more vulnerable to abuse than any other tongue.

If by "abuse" you mean "expansion of vocabulary", then maybe your argument could hold any water at all.

English has been left to fend for itself at a time when it is under unprecedented attack.

At this point I just have to quote Ms.Foster, because she says it better than I could: "Dear Gerald, you clearly know nothing of the history of English so get yourself a good book on the subject. Your native tongue has survived a massive loss of word morphology between the 9th and 12th centuries, a massive loss of native vocabulary to French borrowings between the 11th and 14th centuries, and a tidal wave of Latin and Greek terms in the 16th and 17th centuries. What's happening now that surpasses that?" Exactly. What "attack" is English under now? A more sturdy existence than it's had in centuries?

The worst problem, however, is the collapse of literacy within our education system – the forum that should have been the sturdiest bastion of correct practice.

This is the argument that is coming out of the mouths of so many adults (who are not within our education system), and guess what? It has no evidence whatsoever. Because it simply is not true. The fact that I can write these words, and six-and-seven year olds can read them, proves that there is no "illiteracy" going on. Warner does realize the definition of literacy, right? Since he obviously doesn't, maybe he shouldn't be preaching to children about how we can't read and write.

Instead, laissez-faire attitudes towards spelling, grammar and syntax, encouraged by trendy educationalists, have created a situation in which illiterate pupils have now been joined by a generation of largely illiterate teachers.

...The hell? To paraphrase Ms.Foster's response, find me one teacher that is "largely illiterate". If they were, they wouldn't have been able to fill out their job applications, or make it through high school.

There's also some subtext I see here. When he says "trendy educationalists", I can't help but think that he's referring to Special Education teachers. It probably was not the case, but it got me thinking: What about people who are traditionally "illiterate" because of severe dyslexia or other conditions? Are they contributing to the "unprecedented attack" on the English language?

(Also, as was pointed out by Ms.Foster, syntax is a part of grammar.)

The inarticulacy of young people’s speech is not something that will necessarily correct itself with maturity, as optimists rashly assume: where there is no understanding of the basic structures of our language, self-improvement can only be a hit-or-miss effort.

"Inarticulacy"? Is this guy serious? Children understand the basic structures of their language before they even go to school, typically. And if you can understand, at all, what someone is saying, then it is not inarticulate. What, exactly, can you not understand about young people's speech, Warner? And if you cannot understand it, I believe that's a problem on your part. Because children aren't sending English to hell in a handbasket.

Every literate individual has his own pet aversion. I would single out, in particular, the current pandemic misuse of the subjunctive, rampant in media reports. “Gordon Brown may have won the general election if he had had more convincing policies” suggests that there remains some doubt on the subject, that it could yet transpire that Brown had won the election: “Gordon Brown might have won the general election…” is obviously the correct version, which should come automatically to any educated person.

How many times is this guy going to misuse the word "literate" in this article? First, the people writing this media report are obviously not illiterate, because they could write it at all. Second, are people seriously still whining about the subjunctive? People do realize that use of the subjunctive in English has been dead for years, right? And this guy just gets more and more annoyingly arrogant - "which should come automatically to any educated person"? I presume his definition of "educated" is "full of yourself with antiquated knowledge of points of English that really don't matter at all".

Oh, and "his own pet aversion". Why am I not surprised that he's sexist as well? After all, it's not like we women can be literate, right?

And once again, there is no problem with the first sentence. To test whether there is a problem with grammar, conduct the following simple test:

1.Can you understand what the sentence is trying to say?

a.Yes

b.No

If you answered A, there is no problem. Now let's move on to his next idiotic point.

Oh, look - in addition to being ageist, he's misogynist too! Don't you just hate this guy more and more by the minute?

Aggravating the current crisis is state-sponsored illiteracy, with central and local government promoting politically correct Newspeak, such as “chair” for chairman, and innumerable hideous neologisms such as “spokesperson”, which are additionally offensive in patronisingly attributing infantile insecurity to women.

Just...stop. Stop it, right now. This man is seriously suggested that there is something horribly wrong with words that properly describe people. I am not a "spokesman". But calling me what I actually am is "hideous"? Honestly, who gave Gerald Warner the right to open his mouth, let alone write?

There is nothing wrong with a language evolving – English has always done so; but what is happening now is not evolution but nihilism.

HAHAHA! HAAA!! Oh, my - oh wait, he's serious? Let's point out the ridiculousness of this sentence, one section at a time:

"There is nothing wrong with language evolving"? He has spent this entire article telling us "AAAH! My language is evolving and we need to stop those damn kids and politically correct women from changing it RIGHT NOW!"

"Nihilism"? Nothing entertains me more than this level of hypocrisy - he's shouting that the sky is falling over misuse of words, yet, again, he completely misuses a word. A nihilistic language would mean no language at all. And guess what? People are still using words.

All champions of literacy will wish the society success in establishing a much-needed Academy of English.

"Champions of literacy"? Really, dude? I'll say it again: He's writing things like this to pat himself on the back and stroke his own ego, and this sentence just further proves it.

Well, that was a lot of stupidity in one article. Now, I suppose I shall go back to attacking the English language with my politically correct neologisms. Who's with me?

In The Defense Of Slang

I may not agree with how you say with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it and not be harassed by arrogant grammatical bigots. 
-Me, sending Voltaire rolling over in his grave.

You know what I'm really, really sick of? Well, a lot of things, but here's one: How adults* are so insistent that there is one "correct" way to speak English. And that the "correct" way is the way they, personally speak it.

If I hear one more teacher correct a student over something they said conversationally in an antagonistic way, I will launch into a lecture, right there. Because adults who correct children's grammar are not doing it because they want the child to speak in a way that will make the child happier or improved in any way. They are doing it because they want to make themselves feel better, plain and simple.

It's a fact of life I am exposed to every day: Adults think they are better than children, and they want to constantly reaffirm themselves of that notion. When a teacher would tell me to "correct myself" when I said "ain't"**, it was not because they thought that the contraction hindered my speaking in any way. They were doing it because pointing out how "Kids these days are ruining the English language" would make them feel superior.

Perhaps the thing that bothers me most is when these people insist that there is one form of a language. Indeed, when I confronted my asshole of a Latin teacher (I have mentioned her briefly on The Darker Side Of The Light), after she completely mis-defined the word "agnostic", her only line of defense was "That's the definition of the word in the English language. That's the definition in the English language." Eventually, all I could say was "I don't know what English language you were raised with, but you obviously are too Christian to know anything about other religions."

You should already have realized the problem with her argument: What English language? Perhaps one of the most recognizable defining features of a language is that it is fluid, constantly shifting to accommodate both the expression of new ideas, and the new ways of defining those ideas.

And that's what these people are ignoring: The fact that there is more than one way to express an idea. I know, shocker, right? It's absolutely horrible  that "ain't", "is not", and "are not" can all express a negation. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE POOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE?!

To further this ridiculous idea that ideas can only be expressed one way, I've heard several adults who, when challenged about why one style of talking was acceptable and another was not, say "That is not how people talk! The English language does not accept that phrase[/word/whatever]! No language does!"

Obviously, people talk that way - someone just was before you started harping about how something they apparently didn't say. (*Logic bomb*) The English language does accept it, and you should accept that, too. If someone can say something to me, and I can understand what they mean, then whatever language we're speaking in "accepts" it, end of story.

And yes, I have actually heard the last one, several times. A troubling assumption that reveals both an arrogance about English being representative of all languages, and a misunderstanding about the abilities of communication of ideas, is that what we call "slang" in English is as "unacceptable" in other languages as you want it to be.

I actually find the "no other languages" defense quite amusing. The people saying this do know that many of the things they're antagonizing this poor person for saying actually are "accepted" in other languages, don't they?

For example, something I hear a lot around this high school is the erasure of sentence-beginning copulas in questions. Either by having no copulas, or putting them in some place other than the "accepted" beginning of a sentence. "You got some gum?" (remember the partitive!). And in fact, that is how questions can be expressed in several languages - as if it were a statement with a different intonation. In Lithuanian: "Tu kalbi Lietuviškai." = "You speak Lithuanian." And "Tu kalbi Lietuviškai?" = "Do you speak Lithuanian?" The only difference between the two sentences is the rising intonation at the end - and this is how some people express questions in English.

So, arrogant grammatical-picking adults, does Lithuanian "not accept" that?

And another huge  thing I hear is the admission of copulas altogether in statements. And I mean any use of the copula - identity, class, auxilary usage, all of it. "She over there." "We good." "They ready." And guess what? In both Hungarian and Mandarin Chinese, use of "to be" is quite often admitted. The situation in Hungarian is a little more complicated (it's used sometimes...long explanation), but the fact remains that in general, you are saying "My name Annie." ("A nevem Annie", by the way.)

Let's hear again about that being "unacceptable"?

So yes, one of my pet peeves is arrogant adults stroking their ego by striking down every use of slang they see. This goes for everyone, including myself: Just think before you correct someone - could you understand what they were saying? If so, there's no reason for you to be correcting them.

*I have never seen someone under 15 doing this to another child, and only a couple people 15-18.

**I had to force myself to stop using that word, which was hard, as there was a strong Texan taint to both my accent and vocabulary. I'll explain more about that later, but now I never even use it unless I'm really angry or upset.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 5: A Merced De La Lluvia

L.I.D.S.: Spanish!

I'll admit: I really don't like Spanish as a language. It's got all my worst points against it - gendered, Romance language, distinction between formal and informal "you", and so popular in America that people sometimes refuse to give other languages a chance.

But this song, and this band, is awesome.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 4: Amar Shonar Bangla

L.I.D.S.: Bengali!

Yes, perhaps I'm cheating by using a national anthem. But I think it's a very nice song. I know very little about the Bengali language, and I'm hoping to fix that in the future. Until then, I'm going to enjoy how catchy this tune is.

"Again" - New Pronunciation, Old Habits?

The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout.

Down came the rain and washed the spider out.

Up came the sun and dried up all the rain,

And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.

This nursery rhyme, sung all the time in schools and daycares when I was really young, was what introduced a generation of American children to language change. By first grade, everyone knew "Well, see, 'again' used to rhyme with 'rain', but it doesn't anymore..." But the thing is, I'm still seeing some poets use the word as if the second syllable had [ej]* as its vowel. For example, take these lyrics from "Would You Love A Monsterman" by Lordi, written in 2002.

(Yeah) I would slay,

(Yeah) I would maim,

(Yeah) I would vanish in thin air

And reappear again.

And the singer doesn't adjust "again" to rhyme. (Just as my daycare-mates did, which greatly annoyed me.) So, not only did the writer know that the words didn't rhyme, the singer didn't make an effort to change the pronunciation.  Lordi does have a history of using slant rhyme in their songs ("Hell's already here, and we are living tonight - beast loose in paradise..."), but this is nowhere near close enough to be considered a slant rhyme. No shared vowel sounds, no shared consonants. So, why is this not as remarkable as it should be?

See, writers know a lot about how humans hear, and think about, words. When a non-rhyme using "again" is heard/read, something happens to our immediate perception: The "It used to rhyme, the writer's not being lazy. This is just how it was back in the day," mantra is so firmly engrained into many of our minds, that we will automatically forgive the writer. Even when we know the work is modern, it's sometimes impossible to avoid thinking about it this knee-jerk way.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone should lazy and just stop trying to rhyme altogether...but we've gotta admit, we've got some privilege and wiggle room with the word "again".

*I originally wrote the completely wrong IPA symbol there. Not just wrong, but really wrong. I swear I'm not clueless, just very, very tired.

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 3: Es Izjāju Prūšu Zemi

L.I.D.S.: Latvian!

It's funny: The first time I heard this song, I hated it. Then I listened again, and I began to love that melody. It certainly doesn't help that Latvian (and Lithuanian) are gorgeous languages to my ears, probably because of the Proto-Indo-European qualities of them.

And I'm totally going to pretend that I'm not singing along to those helpful karaoke lyrics...

Songs In Languages I Don't Speak - Round 2: En Kungens Man

L.I.D.S.: Swedish!

...His voice. Damn it, that voice. Seriously, that is one of the most gorgeous voices I've heard in my life. And I love the simplicity of the guitar, voice, and drums, particularly as Falconer (being a power metal band) typically layer the shit out of everything.

Scandinavian Language Humor

...Gotta love it. Scandinavia And The World is a great comic, even if you couldn't care less about history. This is a personal favorite of mine, joking on the stereotypes that Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes have about each other's languages. (It's fun to see things written from a Danish perspective for me, too - here you're lucky to find someone who realizes that "Danish" isn't just the name of a pastry.)

Transcript:

Denmark(To America): Try saying "Rødgrød med fløde!"

America: Roedgroed meed floode.

Denmark: Heh, that sounds funny.

America: It's hard to say.

Sweden(Holding a potato): Here America, try saying it with a potato in your mouth.

America(With the potato in his mouth): Rog grog meg flaog.

Sweden & Norway: HAHAHA!!! Perfect Danish!

Denmark(Holding a beer out to America): Hmpf. Drink eight of these and say it with the potato in your mouth.

America(Drunkenly): Roga grouiga me flouiga...

Denmark(Glaring and Norway & Sweden): Perfect Swedish! Now try singing it.

America(With music notes around the words): Roga grouiga me flouiga!

Denmark(Still glaring, now Norway and Sweden are glaring at him too): Perfect Norwegian!

(Switch to a breakfast table. America is eating pancakes with a visible hangover, Canada is eating cereal.)

America: I swear Canada, I didn't visit any bars last night! I was getting language lessons!

Canada(Unbelieving): Sure, whatever.

Growing Vocabulary And The Poor, Extinct Adverbs

“I was late for the bus this morning, so I sat up and got out of bed quickly, ran down the stairs fast, and closed the door hard behind me when I went out. When I finally got on the bus, I pulled my backpack down roughly onto my lap.”

            What’s wrong with that little anecdote? Nothing, grammatically. It follows all the rules we were taught in Language Arts as kids. So why does it sound so…wrong to us English speakers?

            You probably realized it in the time it took me to start writing that paragraph, but it’s this: The verbs modified with adverbs are long-winded replacements of stronger verbs we use. The paragraph, using standard verbs, would go this way:

            “I was late for the bus this morning, so I jumped out of bed, sprinted down the stairs, and slammed the door behind me when I went out. When I finally got on the bus, I yanked my backpack down onto my lap.”

            Verbs like “yanked” and “sprinted” have negated the need to modify verbs with adverbs. This is why you rarely hear adverbs used in speech – the quicker-to-say verbs have delegated them to use only by poets and authors. Here’s just a couple:

“walk lazily” = “saunter”

“push hard” = “shove”

“sing deeply and loudly” = “belt”

            The interesting thing to me about these verbs is that some of them run on a strength continuum – each word denotes a similar action, but the force of that action is changed by the word used. (Nudge-Push-Shove, Jog-Run-Sprint). Sure, each of the words brings to mind subtle differences in the action, but they’re still relatively the same.

            But now the interest: This is not the case for some verbs. Some “stronger” verbs run along a metaphorical continuum rather than a literal one of strength. Take the above example of “jumping out of bed”. I hear this expression all the time, “jumping” being used for ‘standing quickly/energetically’, or ‘sitting up and standing quickly/energetically’. I cannot physically jump out of my bed, by the traditional definition of “jumping”, without some serious martial arts training. But the use of these metaphorical verbs is just so ingrained into our speech that it looks odd to most of us when we see literal explanations of the word.

            Metaphor. It’s a dang powerful thing.